We've maintained discussions with a couple of other potential Antares customers, but until we return the rocket to flight status and get a couple of good launches under our belt, I don't expect that we will see any serious contract activity beyond the cargo missions for NASA. We remain strongly committed to broadening the Antares market as soon as that is feasible, but I think we've got to get at least the two Antares launches that are scheduled for this year successfully completed before we can really expect much activity from other customers.

First of all -- Blake alluded to this in his comments -- we've got, I think, three big events relating to Antares this year. The first one will occur later this month. In fact, next week, we will roll out to the launch pad, the first re-engined Antares in preparation for buyer testing of the first stage and its new engines, which will occur later this month. That's the first milestone.

Assuming things go smoothly there, then probably on the order of six weeks later -- so that would put us around just after the fourth of July -- we expect to be ready to launch the first of two re-engined Antares rockets on a space station cargo mission, which we call OA-5. And then we will turn around about three or four months later, probably sometime in November, for a second Antares launch on another space station cargo run. So those are the three big events this year. All of the hardware necessary for the engine test, as well as the first two launches of the re-engined rocket, is at the Wallops Island launch base now. And so we are getting close to being back to flight-ready status.

Beyond this year, with the new extension mission added, and with the new CRS-2 contract coming on line, the base level of demand, really through the middle of the next decade, for Antares should run at two or three launches per year. And that gives us a solid foundation on which we can increase market reach of the vehicle, and flight rates as well. We designed Antares, like we do most of our launch vehicles, to represent good businesses for our customers in terms of schedule and reliability, and good businesses for us in terms of profit margin, at fairly modest launch rates.

And we do that by commonality across a broad range of target vehicles, missile defense interceptors, small space launch vehicles, and now with Antares medium-class vehicles, we use a lot of interchangeable parts and subsystems. We use the same engineering and manufacturing teams and facilities, and so as we go from two or three launches a year to five or six launches a year, there's a lot of operating leverage for us in that. Once we get back to flight status and put a couple of good launches behind us, then I think we will start to see some real traction in the broader market, beyond just NASA cargo delivery.

If I'm not mistaken the degree of foreign parts on the Antares makes it barely eligible for CRS. I wonder how did they managed now that they have moved to a Russian engine (the AJ-26 were, for that purpose, considered American).

It'll be interesting to see the mix of Atlas & Antares CRS2 flights NASA goes for.

If you look over on Wikipedia, you find a roughly 2500lb payload weight differential between flying on Antares, and flying on Atlas. And ULA seems to billing this all as part of their new "rapid launch" program. Indeed, things seem to be stacked against Antares at the moment.

NGL is a big "IF" at this point. If the Government wants NGL, Orbital ATK will proceed with development. If not, it won't. There are only going to be two ultimate EELV winners. Right now there are at least three competitors.

Antares has growth possibilities. I don't see it disappearing just yet, but I do agree that its future likely depends on the NGL decision. This despite that fact that Antares and NGL are completely different animals. Antares is a low cost pocket rocket compared to the big boys that everyone is currently planning to build.

Antares once they've optimized the first stage for the new engines will probably be able to get another 1000lbs up, but it still won't be able to match atlas I believe.

My take on this (sorry in advance for dragging a certain company from Hawthorne into the mix):The entry of SpaceX into the market resulted in ULA dropping it's price for the basic versions of Atlas 5. When that happened Atlas V became a cost-effective solution for getting (enhanced) Cygnus into orbit with a bonus being the increased up-mass capacity.So, if and when Antares is put on the back-burner with Atlas V taking the majority of Cygnus launches than SpaceX has succeeded in putting at least one competing launcher out of action.